Have you ever thought about creativity? Do you live a creative life? What does that mean? How would YOU define creativity? What is its purpose?

I have always lived a creative life, and I love it. I never really gave it much thought until I had kids of my own though, and then I started to wonder about what it truly means to be creative. I know now just how important creativity is and how it effects many aspects of our daily lives and the way that we think. Creativity helps us to do many things, such as solve problems, or relax, or express ourselves. I truly believe creativity is one of the most important things to protect and nurture. I read somewhere recently that creativity is declining, I don't believe that to be true, I believe that everyone is creative, they just have to exercise their creativity.

So I hope that you enjoy browsing around my blog and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to use the contact button above!

Week two – Home Decor. This week in hindsight is very amusing! The brief we got was “paisleys”, and I have to admit my first thought was, arrrrrrgh yuk. There is something I like about paisleys but in general they would not be my favourite thing. The thing I do like is that they are so decorative and can be so intricate, so I started off with a very intricate design and it took me over a complete day of drawing to complete. When we got the brief to do plates I played around with many things, one of them being a design with Japanese Koi fish, I plan on coming back to this design later and using it for something else, it also flooded my head with other ideas that I hope I will get to play with, I have kept a book full of ideas.

I however then went off on a tangent and wanted to do paisley hair or dresses and played with that, finally my play let to paisley eyelashes and suddenly veghead was born. I have to admit it is a very strange design and it seems a millions miles away from where I started but it was good fun.

I tried the design in just ink, in gouache, and then in concentrated watercolours, which is the one I preferred. I then created two more for the series, one called fruity , and one called chocoholic.

After that I placed them onto plates and mugs and completed the presentation.

I realise that this is a rather wacky design but still I like it and that is good enough for meHope you enjoyed it

So week 1 of the ‘Make art that sells’ workshop that I am currently doing has just finished. I came very close to not signing up for this workshop, I had the usual doubts like “I’m not ready”, “I don’t think I can do it”, “I’ll be crap”, but a good friend gave me some advice that changed the way I think. She said to me ‘the only person you need to compare yourself to is you,’ ‘we all have our own journeys and are in places on that journey, own your journey.’ I am very grateful that I got that advice and this week was a lot more fun than I had expected it to be!

The brief was for bolt fabric, I have never ever done anything like this before and at the beginning of the week I understandably panicked a little bit! However I have learn’t this week that I really love bolt fabric and my head is now swimming with ideas I want to try and create! My poor little notebook is getting bombarded lol! If every week is like is for the duration of the course I will have enough ideas and things I wish to create to keep me going until the second session starts in October!

Anyhooooo I just uploaded my final piece for the week. I called it “Make it hot honey” and it is about peppers and pyrex.

I learn’t a lot about a market I previously knew nothing about this week. Those two little prints underneath are coordinates. They were also great fun to make.

I ended up with a lot of sketches of peppers and pyrex dishes by the end of the week and instead of throwing away the ones that I didn’t use I have realised that I should keep them, not only may they be useful somewhere else down the road, but they also are helpful to study the medium used vs the effect. As well as that they will be good to look at 2 years down the line to see if I have progressed at all!

Here is the pepper sketch that got me started on the design above, followed the pattern within it and an unused sketch from the beginning of the week that I had too much fun making to not keep it

Overall I had a really fun week and I am thrilled to be on the workshop. Thanks to all those involved.

I have an exciting week coming up but at the same time my nerves are all over the place at the moment! I know in order to grow and learn and that is that I plan to do, I am just hoping to do it with minimal amount of embarrassment! So this is a bit of advice to myself.

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